Blog

This is a phrase no parent is ready to hear from their six-year-old. Yet Emodka seems made to elicit exactly that query. Emodka is an imported French vodka sold in rubber-ducky-colored bottles with the goofy text message icons printed on them. In light of this gross violation of ethical alcohol marketing, the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project (WAPP) mobilized the residents of the state to end importing of the product into Wisconsin. It was a heartening effort in the face of Big Alcohol’s persistent and dangerous lack of accountability for its advertising practices. Yet WAPP, like all public health and safety advocates, need to see real punitive action taken against those who profit from this reckless product, or else Emodka will simply be replaced with another in the endless line of youth-oriented booze bottles.

Researchers have definitively shown the link between youth exposure to alcohol marketing and harmful drinking. Connecting harmful products to cartoons has been a primary method of marketing to youth for almost a century—the tobacco industry was famously called to task for using Joe Camel to make cigarettes appeal to kids, and the sugar industry has long relied on mascots to push harmful breakfast foods on them. However, Emodka, following close on the heels of The Emoji Movie, is in a class of its own in terms of contempt for U.S. norms. So great is this level of contempt that, in the face of massive pressure from Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project and their allies, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the alcohol industry's spirits association, took the rare step of eventually and belatedly censuring the distributor.

Yet even this action was too little and too late, as could be predicted from Big Alcohol’s insistence on self-regulation. There is no federal or state oversight of alcohol marketing practices. All enforcement comes from within the industry itself, and that is often ineffectual. In a report published under its previous name The Marin Institute, Alcohol Justice showed that DISCUS dismissed over half of all complaints over alcohol advertising practice. Frequently, the complaint was deemed addressed with a mere promise to comply in the future. That pattern repeated itself with Stoller and Emodka, where despite violations so blatant that the industry could not help but act, the only punishment was to tell Stoller not import more once the existing stocks had sold out.

“Without consequences from the distilled spirits industry or Federal Trade Commission, the manufacturer can profitably entice children with Emodka for years while watchdogs struggle to catch up,” said Bruce Lee Livingston, Executive Director/CEO of Alcohol Justice. “Self-regulation is a joke.”

As of this writing, brick-and-mortar retailers in over 16 states, as well as online retailers, still list Emodka for sale. It is time for public health and safety advocates to take up the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project’s banner, get this product off the shelves, and tell state and federal regulators that we need government oversight of the alcohol industry now.

TAKE ACTIONto get Emodka off our shelves and end industry self-regulation once and for all.

READ MORE about the herd of Trojan horses in Big Alcohol's social responsibility campaigns.

READ MORE about Alcopops, alcohol products carefully formulated to draw in kids.

The breast is among the most common sites for cancer in the United States. Alcohol use is among the most common behavioral risk factors for cancer in the United States. It should be simple to draw the line between these two facts, but, as writer Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, decades of alcohol industry deception have left most Americans only dimly aware of that fact.

Mencimer’s piece, bluntly titled “Did Drinking Give Me Breast Cancer?”, tells a compelling tale of the author’s confrontation with her own tumor in the context of a health system that never quite got a grip on alcohol harm. She traces the complex history of the “healthy drinking” narrative, including 40 years of industry sponsored science intended to muddy the waters. She admits that she, too, bought into the wine lobby’s charming lie that red wine is good for you. As she points out, “people want to believe that a drink is good for them, and the science in this field is easy to manipulate to convince them.”

The article comes at a perfect time for the alcohol harm prevention community. As the academic community becomes embroiled in a series of corrupt practices at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Big Alcohol is frantically trying to fight off public health measures in Canada, Australia, and Europe to warn consumers that its products are carcinogenic. The latter fight is more than just token opposition from the industry. According to the 2018 Global Drugs Survey, 40% of respondents said that these cancer warnings would affect the amount they drink.

“We need every legislator and their staff to read this,” said Sara Cooley, Advocacy Manager of the California Alcohol Policy Alliance. “And every CAPA member, and potential ally. So incredibly comprehensive of our field, the issues, and the players.”

“Did Drinking Give Me Breast Cancer?” appears in the May/June 2018 issue of Mother Jones. Mencimer has continued to cover alcohol issues for the magazine’s online channels, including the recent Lancet study that showed links between drinking and all-cause mortality, and the trap behind the language of “moderate drinking”. This shift in the media narrative is promising for Americans trying to seize control of their health—but Big Alcohol still has many other magazines in which to sell cancerous half-truths.